Battlestar Galactica DVD Movie In the Works?

Philias writes "Although Battlestar Galactica has been going down in ratings and has yet to get picked up for another season, the sales of its DVDs has got Universal thinking of a Direct-To-Video Movie. GeekMonthly.com is reporting that plans are afoot for a film that will bridge the gap between Galactica and the new spinoff 'Caprica.' The film would be shot in March during the usual hiatus between seasons. The big difference between this and the mini-series and other seasons would be that this would be sold on DVD before being aired on the SciFi channel."

Comments

Re:No surprise ratings are falling.

[TheRaven64]

Baltar was great when he was among the humans with the cylon in his head frakking with his brain. Now among the cylons he is quite uninteresting I find with season 3 that the episodes which spend more time on the Cylon base ship are more interesting. It seems that without Baltar, the human survivors are just much less interesting than the Cylons...

Death by Multiplication?

[Rapter09]

I love RDM's Battlestar Galactica. It's excellent science fiction. The very best we have, I'd say. With that established however, I must make the point that I can see the series dying a horrible death due to inundation. Sure, the show is great and awesome. It's a beacon in the science fiction TV realm, but apparently it's ratings are slipping. Which sucks because its such a darn good show and i'd hate to see it go. Despite the ratings drop they've announced a spinoff series before BSG even really got its gears in motion - 'Caprica' - which is 0% science fiction and 100% drama. They've announced an MMO (or a game of some sort, at any rate) and I believe a pen-and-paper RPG? (the RPG I could be wrong on...), plus this movie.

Now granted, it's a great show, and a direct-to-DVD movie isn't really uncommon, but doesn't anybody think it's a little TOO much? Almost like SciFi, RDM and Eick are riding the marketing a little too hard? Babylon 5 was probably the most famous for direct-to-DVD movies. Most of them were not really on par with the overall quality of the show (except for In The Beginning... which was just... unbelievable.) even though they were nice little departures.

Maybe it wouldn't kill the show per-se, but it seems like they're jumping the gun a little early on this one.

Re:No surprise ratings are falling.

[Altima(BoB)]

I find with season 3 that the episodes which spend more time on the Cylon base ship are more interesting. It seems that without Baltar, the human survivors are just much less interesting than the Cylons... I dunno, I feel the opposite way on this. The cylons were most imposing and effective as antagonists around the begining of the series, when they were mostly faceless (Just the imposing base stars and fighters seen) and were making small, insidious encroachments on organic humanity, like Sharon. "33" was especially effective because even their tactics seemed like brute force mechanical thinking with infinite patience.

Now they seem too human, too emotionally vulnerable and the base star's interior just seems like a space that's too large and relaxing. And seeing base stars filled with Xena's and Tricia Helfer's is somewhat detracting. Though the cylons I really really like are the Dean Stockwell ones and the Grace Park ones. Whereas Lucy Lawless' and Tricia Helfer's cylon characters have grown somewhat flat to me, the other two mentioned represent a lot more of the sadistic cylon determination (Stockwell) and the schitzophrenic identity crisis that organic cylons are bound to have (All those Sharons)

I listen to the podcast commentaries a lot and Ronald D Moore, the producer, openly acknowledges a lot of these issues, that whatever cylon sets they built wouldnt never live up to peoples' imaginations and that revealing more and more about the cylons was always simply too tempting for them as authors. I can appreciate that, but I still think they were perhaps incorrect choices.

What I think they should do with this current arc they are doing is to give Baltar back to the Galactica. The only problem with that is considering how enthusiastically they've ejected people out of airlocks for less, keeping him alive on Galactica would be difficult to do believably. Maybe strand him on the algea planet with someone like the Chief... Also, while another election episode would be rather dull, Laura has stayed in powr through so many unlikely twists that to remove her from power within the fleet would put her character in an interesting position.

For the record, I still think it's the best drama on television, and easily soars above the 99% of TV that's just utter cultural garbage.

Re:What did they expect?

[PsychoSlashDot]

Season 1 had 13 episodes.
Season 2 had 22 episodes, with a long hiatus.
Season 3 has 22 episodes, with a four-week hiatus.

A "normal" season for a television show is 26 episodes.

Don't get me wrong... I'd love to see year-round new episodes, 52 times a year, but it doesn't work that way in TV. Further, what SciFi has done with BSG is increasingly more like "normal" shows, so there's no trending towards "worse", I'm afraid.

Another element to the downward ratings movement may very well be that SciFi started Season 3's broadcast at the same time as the major networks began their new seasons, and a number of hit shows have "stolen" viewer interest. Shows like Heroes, for instance. There's only so much viewer-interest, regardless of how many good/great shows are broadcast. Couch-potatoes will, eventually, hit a TV saturation point.

Re:What did they expect?

[ubrgeek]

Not sure about the validity of the numbers you're citing, but frankly, that seems to be a growing trend among the "alt-cable" channels like SCI-FI, FX, etc. FX is the worst, IMO. I got tired of waiting forever between seasons of NipTuck, The Shield, etc. (Not to mention canceling "Over There" *grin*). My wife and I just stopped caring about the characters with such huge gaps between seasons. I've never really watched The Sopranos, but I understand the same thing was something its fans complained about. Add that to decreased show times and increased commercial interruptions and it just points more and more toward viewers being pushed to find alternatives to what - and how - they watch TV.

Re:No surprise ratings are falling.

[Altima(BoB)]

...and started being a bit more imposing and even began leading the cylons? Yeah I really like that idea. Rather than the puppet leader he was on New Caprica, they could have him as a dominating cult-of-personality type leader, giant posters of his face, etc. aybe even have him discover that he isn't one of the 'Final Five' but have him and his regime claim he is anyway, a Cylon Messiah. Then he can graduate to being a full fledged villain, but his rational side would still fnd conflict with his situation. Plus the Cylons always seemed prone to hysterical zealotry, they now seem far too rational in comparison to the genocide they wreaked at the begining of the series.

Yeah, I like that idea.

Re:No surprise ratings are falling.

[JFMulder]

I think Baltar's Number Six and the reborn Number Six is not the same character at all. The Number Six inside Baltar's head is far more manipulative and dangerous than the flesh and bolts one. To me, the reborn Number Six takes her decisions based on her feelings towars Baltar and the human race, while Baltar's (whose is trying to please Baltar, I mean, it's still his fantasy after all) is there to provoke him and has less emotions than the flesh and bolts one.

As for Batlar being a Cylon himself, while an interesting idea (Baltar is even pondering the notion now), it would be anti-climatic, because it's such an interesting burden (for the viewer) to be responsible for the genocide of your race. It's a great burden to carry. It was great to have a delusional Baltar and it would have been for nothing if he is indeed a Cylon. One interresting plot twist tough would be if he turned to believe he is one and commited suicide to prove his point and we then realize he wasn't. That would be the perfect ending for this character I think. Or if the show ends with the destruction of the Cylons and he last ressurection ship, you end up with a lone Baltar without any ressurection ship to revive him if he is indeed one and you have him on the fringe of death and he will never know if was a Cylon indeed. Cue credits. :)

BSG is top-rated cable series on Friday

[ubuwalker31]

I call Bullshit with the "BSG ratings are falling" crowd

From http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/search/article_display .jsp?vnu_content_id=1003223846 :
-Respectable Start for Sci Fi's Battlestar Galactica:
The two-hour, third-season premiere of Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica was the top-rated cable series on Friday, Oct. 6, with a 1.8 household rating and 2.2 million viewers. Comparatively, however, that was still down by 900,000 viewers from the season two opener in July 2005 (3.1 million).

So, they lost almost a million viewers...and they are still on top. I think that they are gambling that a move to Sunday night might help. I think that the long gaps between seasons helped to kill ratings...not the day of the week.

Re:No surprise ratings are falling.

[Mspangler]

This whole plot always was limited. The Humans are pushed off into deep space. They have no supply, no refit for the ships, and nowhere they can stop. Galactica needs 6 months in the space dock at least. It's falling apart. They are running out of fighters, Raptors, and everything else. It's not sustainable for a long series.

The only options the humans have is slow death by attrition, quick death by Cylon, or jump as far and fast as possible away from the cylons and try to resettle, hoping that by the time the Cylons find them again either they have calmed down, or that the human decendants are strong enough to hold them off. Or, if the fleet does find earth, then earth will be technologically undeveloped, and wiped out by the Cylons, or earth will have starfleet, and blow away the cylons, or earth will have been taken over by their own Cylon equivalents. Long term plot options are limited.

My analysis may be colored by my time in the Navy, when I found out just how much repair time and infrastructure it took to keep one warship operational, even if it was nuclear powered (to remove the fuel problem). One increasingly battered battlestar and a ragtag fleet is not sustainable. The story arc (as in the character's subjective time) must be short.

Now one thing the writers could do is modify that cylon-killing virus so it only works on the "source material" on the Resurrection ships, and infect the Cylons. Then since D'anna is close to discovering that the resurrection routine is functioning as a "soul trap" to keep the Cylons from truly knowing God, the resulting stress could turn into a Cylon civil war, and that would give a way to wrap up the show without either finding earth, or watching the last human die.

But now it's just "Angst and Depression in Space."

Re:Loss of stargate as a lead-in

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. SciFi really screwed up when they mixed up that lineup. When they had their three best shows back-to-back-to-back, each show boosted the others' ratings. Now, with Stargate's season not coinciding with BSG and SG-1 being cancelled, there is less incentive for casual viewers to tune in, thus bringing the ratings down in all of those shows. Further, I think the ratings for all three of those shows are somewhat skewed due to the way they repeat them later that night. If you add together the ratings of the two airings, it yields a much better rating than is being reported, and you know that those are all unique viewers because very few people watch the same episode twice in a row. If you ask me, SciFi is royally screwing itself.

Re:No surprise ratings are falling.

[Blakey Rat]

The hybrid-thing that controls the base ship is such an obvious and blatant rip-off of the psychics in Minority Report, I simply can't stand seeing it on screen. Ron Moore's a good creative guy, he doesn't need to rely on stealing to produce a good show... I mean, what's going on here?

Lose the shakeycam

[PhotoGuy]

I loved the original series, but can't watch the new stuff because of the excess use of shakey cam. We *get* it, yes, it seems more "real" with shakey cam. But it's also very annoying and overused. If I want to turn my head in a jerky fashion, I will, do it by making something else on the screen interesting; don't make the camera do it for me. I find it very patronizing, pretentious, and faddish and I wish producers would stop using it. Let the material show its strength, unobscured by a shaky camera.